


The Hunter

by coplins



Series: Packrunners [32]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Eating Raw Meat, Hunters & Hunting, M/M, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Omega Dean, One animal being killed for food on-screen, Self-Discovery, Shifters, bestiality? Does it count as bestiality if they are both in animal-like form?, shifting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-17
Updated: 2018-10-17
Packaged: 2019-08-03 17:48:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16330742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coplins/pseuds/coplins
Summary: Dean's always loved hunting. Even more so when he has to rely on his own claws and teeth. But this is taking it to a whole new level for him...





	The Hunter

**Author's Note:**

> From this installment forward I'll be jumping back and forth in time, focusing on moments that hold special interest rather than telling a cohesive, chronological story. Some stuff will be based on your question and comments, some will be based on things I want to show, and some just goofy. But we start off with a newfound obsession of Dean's.
> 
> **Warning:**  
>  In case you're sensitive, be aware there's a stag hunted and killed in this one.

Adrenaline pumping, Dean runs barefoot in the dusky woods. He raises his head to scent and listen, excitement lending him extra energy. He makes a quick birdlike trill and gets a response far to his left, meaning Sasha is on the stag’s trail too. Sasha is hiding his scent. It's all kinds of awesome that he can do that. Definitely comes in handy during a hunt. But Dean's downwind right now, minimizing the risk of the stag getting whiff of his approach.

He extends his claws and jumps onto the trunk of a big tree, then shimmies up to the canopy to get his bearings. Not too far ahead there's a clearing with a small brook. There he spots the stag. He licks the sharp points of his fully extended fangs in anticipation. He loves this. Loves the thrill of the hunt, the pride of bringing home food for the whole pack. Sasha promised he could store whatever he couldn't fit at home, at Sasha's place. The fucker has a big freeze box and if the Williams don’t, they’ll have to buy one or Dean will pretend to refuse to move in. It’s not like they can’t afford it.

He starts to climb down but stills when he sees the stag lift its head and stare vigilantly into the woods. Has it seen Sasha? He makes another birdlike call only to get a response from behind the stag. Not Sasha then. He can see nothing alarming between the trees where the stag is looking.

He climbs down when the stag loses interest and starts grazing again, and lopes as silently as he can through the underbrush. It isn’t the first time he’s hunted like this―devoid of weapons, on foot―but it’s the first time he’s done so naked. Or as naked you can be with fur all over your body. It protects surprisingly well against twigs and thorns. Better, perhaps, than clothes would have. When he nears the clearing he crouches down and looks for where the mottling filtering through the canopy matches his fur the best. His heart pounds with suspense and excitement. This was all Sasha’s idea. The topic of shifting had come up when they’d sat playing poker after work. He’d told Sasha he enjoyed being pelted and suddenly he was packed up in Sasha’s car leaving the city behind to go hunting. Sasha instructed him on ‘pattern awareness’, seeing where the grass, trees, shadows and bushes created patterns that would line up with his. Apparently, many animals don’t see an equally broad spectrum of colours as humans so with Dean’s colouring he should be able to turn practically impossible to spot if he chooses his stalking positions wisely. So here he is, trying to blend into foliage while sneaking closer. He stops again by the edge of the clearing, low to the ground.

He reminds himself not to flare despite the hot sensation in his eyes nudging him to do it. Flaring helps navigate the woods even in full darkness and doesn’t affect night vision at all, but it can give away one's position to prey. Sadly his own flare stands out like beacons to animals with the same type of vision as deer. In movies prey can’t see even the brightest red flare, but blue flares appear much stronger than any other colour. Dean has no idea if that’s just something made up to further the myth of the Red-Eyed Alpha™ or if there’s actual science behind it. He’ll have to take Dick or Luci out for night-time hunting sometime, to find out.

He gauges the distance and weighs his options. He could sprint from here. That’d give him a chance to show off his speed and agility for Sasha. Of course, the chances of success increases the closer he can get. But the grass isn’t high enough for him to approach at a crouch, he’d have to lizard-crawl like he does while climbing and it’s hard to go straight into a run from that - it hurts his hips unless he has a couple of seconds to spare between. He could belly crawl too but that is slow and even harder to go into a sprint from, although it doesn’t hurt his hips. It all depends on where Sasha is. If he’s close enough to see and ready to pounce himself.

He makes another bird-trill and gets a response from a rock formation under a tree by the brook on the other side of the stag. He looks over searching for a glimpse of Sasha’s white, grey and black fur. It takes a while, then he blinks in startled realisation. There’s no rock formation. There is only Sasha. The white in his coat is painted yellow by the setting sun and his snow leopard-like pattern mimics the shadow from leaves and a stone’s uneven edges. _Fucking hell,_ that’s awesome!

Bolstered, Dean decides to dazzle him with speed.

He silently counts to three, then explodes into action. It takes two long strides before the stag notices him and leaps away. By then Dean’s hyper-focused only hearing his own heart thundering in his ears, his breath, the ground underneath his feet and the fleeing stag closing in. Nearly there, gaining one foot after another, then― _tackle_.

The stag doesn’t go down, but the tackle is hard enough to make it stagger. Dean’s claws tear into it as he heaves himself up, locks his legs around it, grabs an antler to hold on and glides to hang on its side. Quickly he heaves himself forward to reach the throat exposed by hanging onto an antler, and sinks his fangs in. It’s not a perfect bite―too low―and the fucker is strong, trying to buck, still fleeing in an unbalanced trot. Dean can't change his grip while hanging like this, not while the stag is still on all fours. But he can hang on until the animal tires. Hopefully.

Suddenly the stag comes to a dead stop and is pulled backwards with a jerk that propels Dean off it. He loses his grip around its body with his legs and only manage to keep his grip with his hand on the antler. He hits the ground landing hard on his side at the same time as the stag goes down, seeing Sasha in the corner of his eye, explaining the sudden stop. Without missing a beat he moves, heaving himself over the neck of the downed animal, going for the throat, sinking his fangs deep into the throat high up where he can close its windpipe, holding the antler not to get skewered and with his other hand grabbing the stag around the nose holding its mouth shut and closing its nostrils in case he hasn’t shifted his jaws enough to do his job properly. If he’d been on the other side he’d have been kicking its belly with the long claws on his toes as well. The way he’s lying all over the neck of the stag makes it very hard for it to get back up. 

The stag struggles. Dean can feel it trying to jerk its head, kicking and scrambling with its legs. He swallows all the blood that pools in his mouth - it’s keeping the thrill of the hunt soaring numbing any pain or other input. Wedged over the stag with his head bent in like this he can’t see much, but he sees the glow of Sasha’s flare light up the stag’s head and then it’s head is bent and lifted by the antlers with Dean hanging on. He can see Sasha’s legs and paw-like feet when the other man crouches down, then, a meaty tear and a crunch is heard and the stag goes limp. There are a few more wet crunches before Dean lets go to see what Sasha did.

_Fucking hell,_ Dean thinks to himself when he sees the _creature_ remove his maws from the stag’s neck. Sasha’s a fucking saber-tooth of a man. It looks natural enough in his shifted form but _fucking hell_! One bite to rip up the meaty part of the neck and one to sever the fucking spine. Dean can’t shift his head enough to do that. Correction. He _can_ , as proven when he was trapped by the wolfcats, but not without blinding pain to follow. He’s already shifted as much as he feels safe doing, having slowly shifted his skull and face shape since they got out of the car because Dick’s theory at the dance club stuck with him. What if you do the shift slowly?

Sasha has no such problems. His head goes from looking almost like a tiger to a much more human shape fast enough for Dean to feel poker-hot envy before he catches himself. The way those huge incisors shrink and retract, mouth getting smaller and the bridge of his nose shrinking inward, Dean wants to be able to do that. Sasha smirks, still puffy cheeked from his fur, blood colouring it red and pink. “You're a choker. Is good. Good for big prey."

“A choker?”

"Yes. Like big cat. Like lion. Choke big prey. You do that cute kicking to disembowel too? Like kitten?”

"Yeah. Sometimes. Dunno if I'd call it cute, though,” Dean chuckles in response.

"The Scands rip and tear. I never seen your kind hunt naturally before.”

“And you just chomp the neck clear off,” Dean huffs in amusement.

Sasha shrugs. “If I can. You had him pinned and still enough for me to do so. Otherwise, my kind tear. Long ago we hunted big, _big_ prey. Thick fur. Very thick. Hard to bite through, yeah?”

“Like bears,” Dean states.

Sasha chuckles. “Bears only hard with these small biters,” he says with a smirk curling on his feline features and reaches out to poke at Dean’s fangs. “No. Hard to bite through with these.” He gapes to make his fangs extend to their full length once more for a short moment before he pulls them back up to be able to speak. “Big prey, thick hide, thick fur. So we tear many gashes. Make prey bleed, yeah?” he says flexing his long, wicked claws. “Then when it fall we tear out throat. But smaller prey like stag, I like to snap neck. Make it quick. I like to hunt and kill, but not torture, you get what I’m sayin?”

“I do,” Dean answers and turns his head to look at the unseeing eyes of the stag. He strokes its side while considering what kind of prey could count as bigger than bear and stags. Maybe those woolly elephants and rhinos? There are still a few living in zoos as far as he knows. Maybe as many as twenty each altogether. From what he's read they were extinct in the wild several hundred years ago. “He was so strong. It’s almost a shame to have killed him.”

“No. Never shame to kill for food. Only shame to kill for pleasure and leave kill to rot. He was old. Sired many calves already. Too strong too long makes all other stags have same father. Not good for future.”

“I hear ya.” Dean gets off the deer to stretch his legs, wincing in pain as he starts to feel the rough landing in his fall.

“You okay?"

“Yeah. I'll have a motherfucker of a bruise but I'll be okay.”

Sasha crouches down to cut the stag open with a claw. Dean will never get over how fucking sharp they are. The difference between them is so clear right now. If Dean had done that with his claw he'd ripped the hide open, not cut it. He spots four gashes on the hindquarter of the stag and he realizes why the stag came to such an abrupt stop. Sasha dug his claws in, and the stag’s own forward force cut it up until the claws caught on bone giving Sasha actual grip so he could jerk or dig his heels in.

“Dad trained us to do as little damage to the hide as possible so we could cure it and use it. I get that a mammoth has a large skin but it must still suck having to stitch together all the gashes,” Dean hedges.

"We didn't make leather or pelts. Not unless pregnant Omega or little cub at home,” Sasha tells him while he works. He halts his movement to look up at him. “You need entrails to make sausages?"

"No. Dude. I’ve got a fulltime job. I ain’t got time to make sausages from scratch,” Dean huffs in amusement.

“But you can?” Sasha asks with a hopeful gleam in his eyes.

“Yeah? We are hunters. Sure, we kept farm animals and grew our own vegetables and fruit, but when our pack got decimated in the war all our farmers got killed. So we hunted a lot. Lots of meat to cook. I like cooking and, yeah, I can make sausages.”

“Is not bad luck that only hunters survive in guerilla warfare. The farmers and others are loud. I hear them from far away. Hunters good at sneaking. Farmers good shots but not as dangerous to me unarmed.”

"Yeah, well. Our farmers were fighters too, okay?” Dean defends feeling a bit insulted on his pack’s behalf.

Sasha lifts an eyebrow then shrugs and goes back to concentrating on what he’s doing, jerking with every rib he’s cutting open. Dean tries to quell the ire he feels. Sasha wasn’t insulting his pack in particular, he was telling Dean about his own experiences. Honestly, Dean’s not sure if he could sneak up on Sasha. The fucker moves like a ghost when he wants too. He holds that out like a peace laurel, “I’m a hunter and I probably couldn’t sneak up on you.”

“No, you could. I heard you three times today. Only three is little and I only understood one of those times was you when you called for my position. I heard scraping of bark with leaf rustle. I thought squirrel. It was you. Plus, you are fast. With rifle, you could shoot me in the back, without, you could sneak then dash like you did and I’d be taken by surprise, much like stag.”

Dean chuckles. “Thanks, buddy, but I’d have to find you first and you’re fucking invisible.”

“So I live. Is good.” Sasha winks then pulls out the heart of the stag. “You want?”

“Yeah, thanks. Share it?”

Sasha shakes his head and hands the heart over. Dean tears into the bloody muscle with all of his teeth in sharp points, flattening them out to chew. He wonders why it is that when he’s shifted like this eating raw meat fresh from a kill is next to orgasmic, when normally he’s slightly repulsed. They’ve always eaten the heart at the kill spot if possible, though. According to dad it’s a way to honour the kill and appease the gods. Sasha’s sitting still, looking up at him. When Sasha’s shifted as much as he is now the irises of his eyes are bigger and currently his pupils are almost completely round. He blinks slowly―the slow blink of respect, mom had called it when talking about cats. It’s one of the few things he remembers mom saying since he’d tried so hard to emulate it when interacting with cats―and purrs a content rumble. Dean stares back while tearing another mouthful to chew. Sasha is so fucking gorgeous in this form, from his whiskers to his big eyes and fluffy, round, tufted ears. Somewhere deep inside his brain Sam’s judgemental voice says ‘Dean, he’s not human.’ He shoves at the thought with the defense of ‘he’s human if he’s a man in his unshifted form’. But suddenly that doesn’t hold up. “What’s your unshifted form?” The question hops out of his mouth without thought. He’s feeling a bit ashamed about finding Sasha most attractive like this, in his animal form. What kind of perv will Sam make of him if he knew? He wants not to give a damn. Hell, _he_ doesn’t. But Sam does and if it’s someone whom he always wants to look on him favourably, it’s Sam.

Sasha snorts. “How do you define unshifted form? I shift to get to both shapes.”

Good point. It’s just that Sasha said they rarely used the hides of their prey, so how did they make clothes? They are said to be the link between man and animal, the evolutionary stage before human. Dean doesn’t want to give a shit about that. “But, like, how were you born?” 

Sasha is quiet, narrowing his eyes for a beat then abruptly stands up and motions for Dean to follow. “Come. I show you something.” He leads the way to the brook where water has formed in a still puddle cut off from the stream. There he crouches down and points. “Look. Look here.” Dean follows and crouches down curiously only to be met by his own reflection lit by Sasha’s white gaze looking at his face rather than the reflection of it. How long since they got out of the car and stripped off their clothes? Three hours perhaps? Aside from pelting Dean’s been shifting slowly ever since, keeping Dick’s theory in mind. What he sees shouldn’t come as a surprise, but it does. He should have realised he could see the bridge of his nose without a mirror for an instance, but his mind had been too preoccupied by the hunt. His features is no more human than Sasha’s at this point. A bit more triangular and his nose and jaw isn't protruding as much as Sasha's, like he needs maybe two more hours of shifting to achieve that without pain. “How were _you_ born, so very pretty Omega?" Sasha asks. "I had soft cub fur. White, like the winter snow around us. I didn't shift my pelt away until summer heat came. I don't remember this but if I'd been furless at birth and survived, it would have been big deal. Pack would have been talking about a furless cub that survive winter for many years. I've lived most of my adult life not in this form, but my cubhood and my Juvie years were spent not freezing, and blending into background. Why steal other animals’ fur when my own was so good? Then _they_ came. They also gave birth to furry cubs but shamed cub and adult alike for this so they would instead choose to freeze to death. Is stupid. Just like some of my peers were stupid not to shift in their presence. Also is stupid. What is my unshifted form? I do not know this. I shift many many times every day. You tell me?”

Dean shakes his head. “Me an’ Sammy had short fuzzy fur when we were born too,” he admits unable to take his eyes for the clear wolfcat-human hybrid staring back at him from the water’s surface. No wonder the wolfcats that had him trapped stood down if they saw something like this. He would too if… “You think wolfcats and snow tigers can shift to human-like form?”

Sasha shrugs. “Never seen it. Why not? If the need is big enough.”

Dean stuffs the last piece of heart into his mouth watching the red soaked into the short fur on his face. The tip of his nose and his nostrils are naked and pink where they aren’t blood spattered. He reaches up to feel his face. “It barely hurts.”

“Just remember to change back slowly and you will be no pain.”

Dean huffs in amusement. ‘You will be no pain’ might have been Sasha’s crappy English at work but it sure as hell describes how he felt the last time he shifted this much. “You shift in fucking seconds, Sash,” he accuses. “I don’t see you writhing in pain.”

Sasha scoffs. “The more often you shift the less it hurt. How is this not general knowledge? Is like any physical activity. You gain muscle memory and you need warm-up. But in cells, not muscles. You need to learn to sync the change all over, otherwise brain change shape slower than skull and you get headache or die. I’m no scientist but it’s fucking logic, you get what I’m saying?” He chuckles at Dean’s dumbstruck expression. “Eyy. Everyone teeths all the time. Doesn’t hurt, yeah? You drop fangs often. Does it hurt as much as it did five years ago? No? No, it doesn’t. Same with claws. You don’t always climb with your claws and you use those on your hands more often than on your feet, yeah? Which hurt most? Feet. You shift your hips every time you climb and you’ve been doing that since little cub, yeah? No longer hurts.”

“I don’t sh―” _...ift my hips._ Dean doesn’t finish the sentence out loud. Maybe he does? Then why don’t scientists know about this? Maybe they do? Or maybe they don’t. Modern science was born after the popularisation of the Conservative scripture, meaning, by the time the tools to study medicine in a modern way were invented, people were already hiding and not using their shifting abilities. Nobody in their right mind would openly walk the streets like this or they’d be called monsters and treated as such. Packrunners and other Primals would keep natural behaviour occurring amongst themselves and wouldn’t allow themselves to be made public or studied like bacteria samples. Scientists wouldn’t do these repetitive changes themselves since if you never do them, it’s too painful. Teething, dropping fangs, flaring - those are all part of courting rituals. Everyone wants to get laid so of course they’re gonna remain popular. Apparently the Progs are losing their shifting abilities en masse simply by _not doing it_. But even Conservatives kept most of it in private and ideally to a minimum. How long until they too lost the ability to shift? These questions are a bit too big for Dean. Hell, he doesn't even want an answer. Let Sam think of things like this. All he knows is that he's looking down at near perfection. He loves who he is right now. He looks gorgeous. Why the fuck doesn't he count as a full human being like this? He can talk, think and feel exactly the same.

He swallows the meat and sticks out his tongue to see it has shifted to fit his mouth. He licks around his mouth to try to get the blood off. It isn't working very well. Sasha startles him by leaning in to lick his bloodied cheek with a tongue that's soft at the tip but raspy further in, getting a much better result. Maybe it should feel weird, but it doesn't. Dean turns his head so Sasha can reach better. It feels insanely intimate. Maybe this is the original kiss? Maybe this is why many have an aversion to kissing? Sasha's tongue swipes over his lips, chin and cheeks and it’s… it’s… 

Dean opens his mouth and licks Sasha’s tongue when it swipes over his lips again. Sasha jerks back with a startled chirp and blinks in bewilderment at him with eyes big and round and fluffy ears slicked back against his skull. (Which is awesome because it means that not only has the ears changed shape, but they can _move_.)

“Aw, fuck. I shouldn’t have done that, should I? I made you uncomfortable,” Dean flusters.

“What? No. No no.” Sasha bends his neck looking away from Dean with a small smile and a little laugh that sounds as flustered as Dean just did. “Not at all. Not uncomfortable. Now, I will go skin our prey,” he says and gets to his feet.

“You need help with that?” Dean ask the back of his hastily retreating friend.

“No! I am big strong Alpha. I need no help. Durr, durr, durr,” Sasha says jokingly and walks in a stiff swaying motion with his arms held out by his hips, paws fisted in a parody of macho-Alphas in movies.

Dean throws his head back laughing at the silly antics. “No you’re not. You’re a big, strong dweeb.”

“One can be both,” Sasha says while he works quickly and efficiently to skin the carcass. He keeps doing these happy, startled chirps that make Dean’s heart flutter. It’s giving Dean mixed signals. As fast as Sasha retreated after the let’s-call-it-a-kiss one might have thought he didn’t like it and didn’t want it, but acting all goofy while chirping like a jubilant kit told a different story. It’s all very confusing. If Dean could smell him he’d kno― _Hey, wait a fucking minute!_

The moment realisation strikes he feels challenged by it. Dean wants to ask but he also feels riled up and playful after the successful hunt. He quickly gets to his feet and stalks silently towards Sasha's turned back. Then… _pounce!_

Sasha utters a startled roar when he's tackled so they both go down over the carcass rolling trying to get the upper hand. Dean's biting and clawing, grappling frantically adrenaline shooting through his blood stream just like during the hunt. He's taking bites and jarring hits he doesn't acknowledge. None of them use full force in their bites but when Sasha has Dean pinned growling in his face with his fearsome maw gaping Dean panics and kicks with legs, curling his back up as much as he can while bending his legs inward. One of his claws finally gets through the dense fur and Sasha recoils with a startled yelp of a wounded dog.

“Oh shit! Fuck, I'm sorry. Are you okay?" Dean says scrambling to his feet when he sees the thick line of red soaking through the pristine white fur on Sasha's belly.

Sasha backs up a couple of steps growling, then he looks down. He retracts his fur around the wound and inspects the damage. It's deep enough to scar but not to reach any vitals. It should probably be stitched. Sasha dribbles a big blob of saliva onto his hand and proceeds to rub it on the wound with a wince and a grimace. He looks up again with grim determination, his oval pupils turning to mere slits so thin they look like snake eyes, then he charges.

Dean has a split second to feel utterly terrified. He doesn't believe Sasha would hurt him for real but he doesn't _know_ and― 

This time he is the one to be tackled to the ground with a painful ' _ouff_ ’. Granted, it probably wouldn't have been painful if he hadn't almost evaded Sasha's attack and thereby landed on his already battered side. He struggles but Sasha has him pinned down with his full weight showing his teeth but not making a sound. The claws on the paw-like hands holding his wrists are retracted, Sasha's not biting. Dean relaxes before he chokes on his own heart in fright. “Why are you still hiding your scent from me?” he asks when he stills.

Sasha chuckles, lets go of his wrists and gets up to stand on all fours over Dean.

Then, in the blink of an eye, Dean can smell him. Pain - that gash hurts like a motherfucker, excitement - Sash is downright exhilarated, but most of all, covering the other scents like a thick, intoxicated blanket - _arousal_. Dean blinks and looks down between them. Sasha's dick is almost completely hidden by a fur covered pouch but the pink head peeks out.

Sasha starts moving as to get up but Dean doesn't even think before flipping over onto his belly, getting his knees on the ground and presenting so eagerly he all but spears himself on Sasha's cock head.

Sasha growls and covers Dean's back with himself. His jaws open wide to grip Dean's neck, then he stills, rumbling a sound that is as aroused as it's frustrated. Dean keens encouragement and wiggles his ass until he feels the dick swelling more, triangular head sliding in all the way.

They're naked. Naked means no pockets which means no condoms. No condoms means a risk of pregnancy. Or… a chance of one? Fuck, but imagine how strong the kit would be!

For a while Sasha holds their position. Then he rolls off with a disgruntled growl to lie on his back.

Dean whines in disappointment and scoots to rest his head on Sasha's shoulder. “Sorry. Didn't want to force you to do anything you don't want to.”

Sasha chuckles. "Don't want? Since when are you noseblind?"

“Hey, being horny isn't the same as wanting to.”

Sasha chuckles again and turns his head to nuzzle Dean. “I told you. I knot you, I put cub in your belly. I want to, but also want strong pack for cub.”

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Speaking of pack… Sam's already mated to Raff, Luci and Gabe. Mike's being a pissbaby about being the only one still unmated of his brothers. He’s trying not to show it when I’m around which is fucking hilarious. And Luci’s a pissbaby about being the only one who hasn’t knotted me yet but he’s vocal about it. Or rather, he’s vocal about it to Gabe. And he still thinks my phone is Gabe’s.” Dean sniggers. 

“Why haven’t you been with him? I thought you liked him?”

“Fuck yeah. I like all of them. I’m not playing hard to get or anything. But every time I’ve scheduled a date with Luci one-on-one something comes up.”

“You intend to mate all of them?”

“Well, _yeah_ , if they want to and if it happens. I’m head over heels for all of them. ...Why? You don’t think I should?”

“ _Eyy_. I don’t feel with your heart,” Sasha says with a scowl making Dean laugh.

“Yeah, alright. I feel ya. How do you feel about Marlon? I’ve met him three times already but I’m beginning to see what Dick was talking about. On the date he was drinking. Not a lot, but he was, and it was easier to push him off-center. The other times he was sober and he’s about as easy to pin down as a wisp of smoke.”

“Smoke is easy. You don’t pin down smoke, you trap it. With glass, yeah?”

“Yeah? So how do I trap him?”

“Go to his home when he’s alone. When he opens you shoulder your way inside, marking things as you go.”

Dean legit gasps, pushes himself up to a sitting position to stare down at Sasha. “Sash, I can’t do that. I can’t enter their home without an invitation!”

Sasha smirks lazily and reaches up to bop Dean’s nose with a finger. “If you get invitation, it’s no trap and smoke will blow away again. That’s why you need to shoulder your way in before invite come. He won’t fight, but he’ll want to. He knows you’re taking over his pack already, this way you let him know you’re taking over him too. But do all with smiling face and no violence, yeah? Except to defend yourself if he’s more stupid than I think. He hurt you, I end him, yeah?”

_Yeah, no, Sasha would never hurt me_ , Dean thinks. The fear he felt when he couldn’t smell the man was unfounded. “I need to think about that because that’s… yeah. That goes beyond rude into downright hostile.”

“It does. And it puts the claim that he’d do anything for his pack to the test. Is good. I promise.”

“We’ll see.” Dean turns his head to look at what he’s already smelled as a coyote sneaks into the clearing approaching their kill while keeping a cautious eye on them. “My mate, Cas, said that you shouldn’t choose a life-partner based on who smells the best but whom you’d rather be stuck traveling with for months alone. I thought he was insane because with him those two were the same, you know?”

“Is good advice,” Sasha agrees.

“I get it now. What he meant. I'm head over heels for these Williams guys. For all of them. But when I imagine travelling, being on the road for months at end… if I could only pick one person and wasn't allowed to pick Sammy, it's not anyone of them that come to mind.” He pauses to give Sasha a meaningful look and chuckles at how smug it makes Sasha look. “You've travelled. You've seen the world. How much am I missing out on? Because back home dad used to take us on hunting trips. Just pack us up and go for days and sometimes weeks. Or if we went on a road trip to Kansas City he'd bring Bobby too no problem. But here I can't even book a date with Luci without a business meeting or whatever getting in the way. And it's not that I don't want to be with my pack or anything, I just want to travel, you get what I'm saying?”

Sasha looks calm and happy but his scent acquires the sting of discontent. “Is this about tentacle-shifters?”

Dean throws his head back laughing. “No!” He sniggers and looks down at the grass. After a couple of beats of silence he says “Yeah, okay. Maybe a little bit.”

Sasha rumbles in amusement. “Start shifting back now so you’re back to your normal shape before work tomorrow morning,” he says and sits up, then claps Dean on the shoulder. “I go take care of stag before the coyote eat all of it.”

Later, Dean falls asleep in Sasha’s bed still shifting back. He’s surprised to find the shift continued during the night and he looks fully human again in the morning. His body aches all over and not only from the bruises. The mild headache remains all day but it's worth it. Next time he'll have to shift even more slowly. He keeps dropping fangs and clawing his non-dominant hand when nobody's watching. Rinse repeat. One day he'll be able to shift as quickly as Sash. He wonders how many years it took to get that fast. It doesn't matter. If it takes him a 100 years he'll simply have to live that long. He just wishes he didn't have to choose between two lifestyles. When he's working at the office he enjoys that too. It’s another form of hunting.

The answer Sasha had given him on the question of what was his unshifted form had jarred him. 'I shift to get to both forms’. The answer to who is human isn't as clean cut as he'd thought. Sasha had shown him how a Siberian looks when it's born while he shifted back - the shape of a normal human but with short fur, naked around nose and mouth, hands looking mostly like normal hands and feet mostly like paws. Not that different from Sam and Dean. But Sasha was born in -5 ℉. No wonder he and his parents chose to live fully pelted. It all makes Dean ache with a bitter longing. The Siberian way just seems more pure.

* * *


End file.
